FRANK GEHRY’S COLUMBIA By: Elizabeth A. Evitts
As the visionary city of Columbia begins its first makeover, the building that now-legendary achitect Frank Gehry designed for James Rouse four decades ago are in jeopardy. Are they worth saving? 76
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A profile of Frank Gehry.
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people to Gehry,” says University of Maryland professor Isabelle Gournay, who’s currently working on a study of the state’s modern architectural gems. “[Gehry] was very young at the time, and I think Rouse had a role in promoting modern architecture in Maryland.” And yet few people outside the area are aware of Gehry’s work in Columbia. Last fall, Howard County Tourism, Inc. decided to capitalize on its association with the famed architect by developing a tourist brochure highlighting Gehry’s work. Frank Gehry, Extraordinary Architect publishes this winter and will be distributed throughout the county and in hotels and tourist centers. The County Tourism marketing campaign dovetailed with another important development in the story of Columbia: the sale of the Rouse Company to General Growth Properties in November of 2004. That news came after months of speculation. Earlier that summer, Rouse offered to sell Merriweather to Howard County on the
An architect named N. David O’Malley, who worked with Rouse on a number of earlier mall projects, introduced Gehry to members of the Rouse group at a party. Gehry impressed Rouse’s top planner,
physical structures, but also from how those structures relate to each other and the surrounding area. “I think that the big issue is to be a good neighbor,” Gehry has said. “That means that you respect what’s around you and its context.” Gehry was originally offered the job of head designer for Columbia, but the California-based architect decided he could not leave his West Coast life and commit to that long a leave of absence. But he did accept the commission to design the Exhibit Building and returned to Maryland with an architect named Gary Walsh. The two joined forces with O’Malley to form the firm of Gehry, Walsh & O’Malley. The team, with Gehry in the lead role, worked on the four buildings for Columbia. For the Exhibit Building, Gehry designed a stucco structure downtown on the lakefront with a sloping metal roof that was sliced by a linear skylight. The fire station was also fabricated from stucco and topped with a stylishly angled roof. These angular structures were just a hint of the stunningly sculptural facades that Gehry would later create. Another architect was originally designing Merriweather, but when he failed
“I think that the big issue is to be a good neighbor,” Gehry has said. “That means that you respect what’s around you and its context.”
ames Rouse wanted to build Utopia. When describing the potential he saw in the planned community of Columbia, Rouse often spoke in emotional terms. “Conviction grew that the new city could, in fact, bring forth new structures, new relationships, new attitudes—a new community in which understanding, trust, respect—yes love—might flourish,” Rouse once stated.
And to realize his Utopian dream, Rouse discovered and nurtured new talent. With Columbia, he not only developed a new kind of city, he also fostered the careers of architects, designers, and urban planners. Most notably, he helped launch the career of a young Californian named Frank Owen Gehry. Today, Gehry is a household name known for his exotic and sculptural designs like that of the Guggenheim’s Bilbao museum and Disney Hall in Los Angeles. But in the mid-1960s, his career was just beginning. Rouse saw a kindred spirit in Gehry. Over the span of several years, Gehry helped create four buildings in Columbia: Merriweather Post Pavilion, the Exhibit Building, the Banneker Road firehouse, and the Rouse Company headquarters. These structures not only represent the superstar architect’s first major commissions, they also hint at greatness to come. As such, they are landmarks in modern architecture. “It’s important to alert
on the opportunity of a lifetime—the creation of an entire town. Tennenbaum joined two other young designers, Morton Hoppenfeld and William Finley, and the three worked to lay out the new town. A big part of the early job was driving and walking the expanse of hilly farmland to get a sense of the topography. Tennenbaum, who lived his entire life in New York City, had never driven an automobile and he still clearly remembers learning to drive while mapping Columbia. Tennenbaum still resides in Columbia and recalls the day he and Frank Gehry tramped through farmland together to find a location for the city’s first major building. “We walked around to look for a site for the Exhibit Building,” which would be used to showcase the new project to potential homeowners, recalls Tennenbaum. “Even then, Gehry knew very well where he was heading. I’ll never forget—he said he was going to develop an architecture that uses simple, off-the-shelf materials in a new way and create a new aesthetic. Very early on he had that vision, and he did that in the very early projects.” Gehry came to Rouse’s attention just as plans for Columbia were coming together.
condition that the County enclose the venue and support development of a surrounding 50-acre parcel of land. The news sparked strong reaction, as residents and community activists protested the alteration to Gehry’s Merriweather design. Columbia, it seems, is at a crossroads. New development threatens to change the fabric of the place. Neighbors are now galvanizing around the founding principles of their town and are asking themselves, “What would Jim do?” They are struggling to save not just the architecture of Frank Gehry, but perhaps even the very essence of their community. By the mid-1960s, James Rouse already had a stellar team of young urban planners working on his groundbreaking Columbia project. Early in the planning stages, a New York architect named Robert Tennenbaum caught Rouse’s attention. Tennenbaum was just 27 years old when he was summoned to a large tract of farmland in Howard County. The architect left the Big Apple to embark
Hoppenfeld, who subsequently introduced the budding architect to his boss. In a recent interview with Rouse biographer Joshua Olsen, Gehry remembered his first impressions of Rouse. “He was interested in a lot of the same things I was—people and human scale,” Gehry said. Both men were also keenly interested in community. They realized that the spirit of a place comes not just from well-designed
A sketch of the headquaters
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to produce, Gehry, Walsh & O’Malley took on the project. Gehry’s team quickly turned the job around and got the pavilion built. True to his earlier conversation with Tennenbaum, Gehry used quotidian materials in a simple and thoughtful way. He paired rough-finished Douglas fir with exposed steel Ibeams and concrete to create a trapezoidal wedge in the woods. It would be a harbinger of things to come. “Some of the ideas [in Columbia], especially the music pavilion, seem to have interested him afterwards,” notes Gournay. In fact, when describing Gehry’s Disney Hall design more than 30 years later, New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger could have been describing the design sentiments behind Merriweather: “It is a serene, ennobling building that will give people in this city of private places a new sense of the pleasures of public space.” While working on the Columbia projects, Gehry and Rouse developed a close friend-
ship. “They really did have a very personal relationship, it was not all architect and client,” says Joshua Olsen, author of Better Places Better Lives, a Biography of James Rouse.
through the woods and talk not just about architecture, but also about things like nature and contemporary American life. Working so closely with Rouse introduced Gehry to project planning on a grand scale, and this certainly influenced the vision of a man who later conceived massive architectural projects for major cities like Bilbao and Los Angeles. With the three commissions finished, Gehry, Walsh & O’Malley dissolved and Gehry returned to his own firm in California. By the late 1960s, the burgeoning Rouse Company had outgrown its headquarters in Cross Keys and Rouse decided to relocate his staff to Columbia. The move was a significant step for the evolution of both Columbia and the Rouse Company. Their new home needed to be a significant structure. “Every day we become increasingly aware of the enormous importance to our company and our country of making Columbia the reality it must become,” Rouse
“It is a serene, ennobling building that will give people in this city of private places a new sense of pleasures of public space.” “He and Gehry saw eye-to-eye on a number of fronts. They were both very liberal in their political outlooks and they were both committed to making people’s lives better through architecture and development.” During the design of Merriweather, Rouse and Gehry would take walks
told The Daily Record in December of 1968. “We plan to build a new building that will be beautiful, sensitive to the needs of the people who work in it, and efficient in carrying out our business purposes.” In April of 1969, Mort Hoppenfeld recommended that Gehry design Rouse’s Headquarters building. James Rouse agreed and Gehry returned to Maryland. They sited the new building on the shore of Lake Kittamaqundi and Gehry designed an open interior with large windows overlooking the water. The offices centered around an indoor garden and radiated out with an exposed floorplan, which encouraged interaction between employees and departments. The space was flooded with natural light from creative fenestration. The concept behind the Rouse Headquarters building would be mirrored in Gehry’s later work for other corporate headquarters, like the Chiat/Day Building in Venice, California in 1991. After a painstaking and often arduous design process where budget realities bumped heads with design, the Rouse Company finally broke ground in November of 1972. Four years later, the completed building earned Gehry an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects. “The jury commented that this was one of the most humane office buildings both inside and out they had ever seen,” Gehry wrote to Rouse after getting the news. “I accept some of the responsibility for that, but understand deep down that I reflected and agreed with my client, and that without your attitudes about how people should live and work, and your willingness to stick to your guns even when the going was rough, this project would have never been realized. I thank you for everything.” Gehry continued his relationship with Rouse by working on the design of a Santa Monica shopping center for the company. During this project, Gehry’s tastes evolved toward the more radical design he now pursues. He renovated his own home with liberal amounts of chain-link, corrugated metal, and asphalt, and shocked Rouse by installing chain-link over the roof of the Santa Monica Place Mall project. After the mall’s completion, one of Rouse’s top brass, Matt DeVito, visited Gehry in California. As the oft-repeated story goes, DeVito, upon seeing the architect’s home, suggested that Gehry move in that direction and pursue more artistic and innovative design.
Prauge Dancing House designed by Gehry
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The planning of the Rouse house, built in 1975.
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Gehry took the suggestion, and the rest is history. Amanda Hof says not many people realize the Gehry/Columbia connection, let alone the role that James Rouse played in the architect’s career path. Hof is a tourism specialist for Howard County Tourism and the author of the new brochure on Gehry. “He’s coming up more and more lately because of the controversy at Merriweather and the sale of the Rouse Company, but I would say not a lot of people know that Gehry’s work is in Columbia,” says Hof, who hopes the brochure will raise awareness and bring curious tourists to Columbia. Raising awareness is why Ian Kennedy co-founded Save Merriweather in 2003 with Justin Carlson. The advocacy group wants to make sure the pavilion remains an open-air venue for generations to come. They are just one of an increasing number of citizen groups actively tracking the developments in Columbia. “Justin and I both grew up here and we buy into this vision that everyone talks about, that Columbia is kind of Utopian,” says Kennedy. “We
believe that we can make better suburbs that are vibrant and alive, and Save Merriweather is just one part in a greater evolving community. We realize we’re in transition and the sale of Rouse was a wake-up call.”
historic from the recent past, things like the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War.” The sort of rapid, market-driven changes happening in Columbia are one reason why some preservationists are focusing on the concept of “recent past preservation,” which looks to identify and salvage important buildings that aren’t yet on the national radar. Fifty years is the accepted benchmark for a structure or a place to be considered worthy of preservation, and Columbia is still years away from that anniversary. But preservationists such as Longstreth maintain that a strict adherence to the half-century timeframe jeopardizes some of our country’s most significant architecture. “Fifty years may be the national standard of when something can be listed as historic,” says Longstreth, “but if you wait 50 years, you’re going to lose stuff.” Stuff like Frank Gehry architecture. That is one reason why the Maryland Historic Trust enlisted Isabelle Gournay and her colleague Mary Corbin Sies to survey modern architecture in Maryland. “We need more information on the 20thcentury landmarks,” Gournay says. “There are a lot of buildings [in Maryland] being
“It It was clear what Rouse’s motives were. He believed in social improvement and non-physical aspects of community development. development.”
Ian Kennedy standing by an oak tree.
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In July, Howard County Executive James Robey named 15 citizens to an advisory board to review the economic viability of purchasing Merriweather. The committee was charged with assessing whether the county should buy the facility and accept the proposal for a smaller, enclosed facility. Shortly after, Ziger/Snead of Baltimore was hired as a consultant to the advisory board to determine what should be done with Merriweather. In a December report,
the firm concluded that the venue could remain viable as an open-air facility, but not as an enclosed theater. But even if it remained open-air, it would require about $15 million in upgrades. [As of this writing, the issue has not been settled.] But no sooner had the county started solving one problem, than another appeared: General Growth Properties was making rumblings about vacating the former Rouse headquarters in Columbia, potentially jeopardizing yet another Gehry site. Part of the challenge for a place like Columbia is that the public might not perceive something so contemporary as needing preservation. “A lot of people say, ‘Well that couldn’t be historic,’ because in their minds what is historic is several generations removed,” says Richard Longstreth, who directs the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at George Washington University. “Yet there are a lot of things now that we see as
A photograph of the Exhibit Center construction.
demolished without any type of publicity, so this is a major issue. Something has to be done.” In the meantime, residents like Ian Kennedy continue working to preserve not only the architectural integrity, but also the spirit of Columbia. “I actually met James Rouse my freshman year of college, the year before he died,” says Kennedy, who was studying environmental policy and community development. “It was clear what Rouse’s motives were. He believed in social improvement and the non-physical aspects of community development. I do like to think that my penchant for community development is a result of my upbringing in Columbia.” Now, the future of Columbia depends largely on how a new generation relates to the town’s Utopian design. And one thing’s for certain—with Gehry in the mix, Rouse’s isn’t the only visionary legacy under consideration.
The Rouse building.
Elizabeth A. Evitts contibutes regularly to Baltimore Magazine.
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